Truck hijacker enters more than a dozen guilty pleas

Police had two snipers in position, ready to shoot the suspect in the armed kidnapping of a trucker during a high-risk takedown last year in Kamloops, a judge has been told.

David Chappell pleaded guilty on Tuesday to more than a dozen charges, including 10 counts stemming from an incident that began alongside the Yellowhead Highway near Clearwater, went north to Blue River and returned south, ending at the commercial weigh scales on the west end of Kamloops.

Court heard the 35-year-old became involved in a high-speed chase with a Clearwater Mountie on Nov. 6, 2017, before ditching his minivan and threatening a trucker with a revolver-style handgun — a weapon that turned out to be a BB gun.

Chappell fled from police after being awoken by a Mountie who found him passed out at the wheel of his Dodge Caravan.

He eventually stopped and pulled his imitation pistol on a trucker at a pullout near Blue River, kidnapping the driver and ordering him to pilot his super-B rig away from the area.

The trucker then took a call from his boss, who had police on the line. While he drove south toward Kamloops, the RCMP’s emergency response team set up at the weigh scales near Kamloops Regional Correctional Centre.